The boy set his fork down and used his toast to mop up the last bit of mercurial egg yolk on the thick ceramic plate. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he drained the last of the glass of orange juice and sat back in his chair, his belly now taut and full, and watched the old man stepping lightly around the kitchen, talking quietly about nothing, while the wind sent clouds of dust rolling over the tiny house. The boy’s eyes roamed the room, taking in the stacked issues of Western Horseman, sale journals, broken leather straps draped over chair backs, Navajo blankets, silver buckles, knives, some freshly sharpened and some in need of sharpening. The house was cramped, dirty, and smelled like cats. But it was also warm, full of food, and safe.
“You countin’ ghosts over there, kid?” the man called from the kitchen.
“No, sir,” the boy jumped up and brought his plate to the sink to join the never-shrinking mountain of dishes.
“I asked if you were full.”
“Right to the brim, sir.”
The man poked his stomach with a fork and the boy jumped back.
“Did you bring all the eggs in?”
“Yessir.”
“Did that black hen seem a little sick to you?”
The boy looked out the window, suddenly feeling guilty that he hadn’t checked.
“I didn’t see. I’ll check again though.”
“Don’t worry about it. You best be getting home before this wind gets worse. We’re like to get six inches of fresh dust today. Won’t be a single leaf left on the cottonwood outside.”
The boy turned toward the door and pulled his jacket on. He pretended to fiddle with the zipper until the old man turned back to the kitchen. Then he fished an obsidian arrowhead out of his pocket and left it on the table. He didn’t have money, but leaving something made him feel better for taking the old man’s food.
The piles of magazines rose, were shuffled out, and rose again. The straps were skived and sewn, and new ones took their place. The old man scraped edges onto the knives, which got dull and went back into the pile to get sharpened again. Cats came and went. Even the black hen died, and eventually so did her daughters. Seven years later the boy stomped up the stairs, his arms full of grocery bags, and kicked the door open at the bottom. The old man sat where he almost always was, on the couch, watching a rebroadcast of a rodeo on RFDTV. The pale light of the old television highlighted the wrinkles on his face and showed through his ears like they were made of wax paper.
“There’s cash in the drawer,” the man shouted over his shoulder.
“I know where it is.” He dropped a receipt in the drawer and counted out the money.
The boy brought the bags to the pantry and started unloading the cans. There were a few old cans still in the cupboard that didn’t have the pop-tabs. These he palmed and hid in the nestled bags, except for one tin of canned beef.
“Where’s your can-opener?”
“On the counter there.”
The opener was under a precarious mountain of dishes. He pulled it out and washed the blood off, glancing at the scrapes on the old man’s knuckles. Once he opened the tin of beef and had it warming in a pot, he dropped the opener in the bags and kicked them into a pile near the door.
“Got any requests for entertainment while we wait?”
The old man raised a shaking hand and clicked the TV off.
“Do you still know the Shooting of Dan McGrew?” he asked.
The old man was in a Robert Service kind of mood and the boy recited all the ones he knew as he stirred beans into the pot and then spooned the mixture over a tortilla with some hot sauce and cut some chunks of cheese into it with his knife. The old man ate quietly while the boy cleaned, sometimes stopping in between bites to talk about his favorite poems.
When he was done the boy sat down hard on the ancient couch, frightening an unseen cat from under it.
“What day is it?” the man asked.
It was sometime in late May.
“You’ll be packing mules soon, then?”
“Already started. I’m on my way back from a mustang viewing trip out of Benton.”
“Mustangs.” The old man sniffed. “Those was just our saddle stock before someone decided to protect ‘em. Now they’s just nags.”
“There’s a couple good ones in there. Lots of color this year in the colts.”
“Color.” He sniffed again.
“Trish is going to come by and check on you.” The boy was writing down a list on the little book in his pocket. “Remember, she came with me last time?”
“I remember. She doesn’t have to.”
“She wants to. She says you’ve got great stories.”
“They’re all lies anyway.”
“That never stopped you from telling them before.”
The man sniffed and the boy stood up.
“I’d better get in the wind.”
“I got something for you.”
The old man took three tries to get up before he made it, swatting the boy’s offered hand away. They shuffled toward the back rooms, and the boy noticed all but one of his light bulbs were out. He made a quick note in his book.
“I thought you’d like to have these back,” the old man said, and the smile on his face was genuine as he held out a black frame.
It was backed with cotton, and circles of arrowheads gleamed like treasures in the dim light. Each one had a scrap of paper pinned under it with a date.
The boy’s eyes swam.
“I can’t take this.”
“It’ll fit in your truck.”
He held the frame in his hands, afraid to look up into the old man’s eyes. “I mean they’re yours.”
“I know that. So they’re mine to give away.”
“I gave them to you.”
“I know that too. I was there.”
The boy shook his head and handed the frame back. “Can you keep it until August when I get back?”
The old man shook his head. “I don’t have that long.”
“Just until August, please?”
“You’ll bury me in July, boy.”
He shook his head again, still afraid to look up. “I’m booked through then. You’ll have to wait. Just keep it for me, please.”
In August the boy stood in the kitchen, cursing bitterly. The house was empty now, and the wind whistled through holes in the metal siding. There were no cats he could see, and the whole place smelled faintly of bleach.
“You stubborn old fuck.” He fished in his pocket and brought out an arrowhead. “I found this a few days ago. Thought you might like to start a new collection.”
No one answered. No one had called or wrote him when the old man died. There was no reason they should, he thought. Probably none of the man’s adult children knew he even existed.
He walked into the front yard, expecting to hear the squawk of chickens. Silence filled the yard, rolling in from the desert outside. He squeezed the arrowhead until the edges bit into his palm and blood oozed around it, then he shoved it point-first into the earth underneath the old cottonwood outside and walked away.